Photo Credit: Rachel Buth
Freddy La Force is a bartender, a punk musician, a writer and, as of last year, a publisher. Last fall La Force founded the DIY publishing company Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, which has so far released two books of poetry, Heidi Koos and Nathan Fredrick’s Parallelograms and Bethany Price’s Terror, with hopes of publishing between five and 10 books a year going forward. La Force spoke with the Shepherd about the rewards and challenges of small-batch publishing.
What inspired you to create your own press?
During the last summer I was writing a lot and I thought that I would like to have a book finished by the end of the year. Then I thought to myself that it would be very difficult to get it printed and put out, so I thought why not do it myself?
How much work does doing it yourself entail?
It’s some work. Initially I was even doing the binding by hand. I bought a thermal binder recently, but it’s a lot of investment and a lot of time taken. And when you work full time, there’s little time left for personal endeavors. Between printing and cutting and binding, initially it was taking me up to two or three hours to do 10 or 20 copies, on top of waiting 24 hours for the books to dry. Now I’ve reduced the time considerably with the binding machine, but it still requires finding time to do that; then there’s editing and making sure everything is formatted correctly and all that.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
So is it worth it?
Absolutely. Just to be able to put that product in the world and say, “I made this, and I put myself or someone else’s work out there for people to notice and maybe to benefit from” is super cool.
Why was it important to you to print books, when it’s much easier to self-publish online?
Well, to me, it’s the physical interaction with the page. You’re really holding something that someone made a few months ago or years ago and thought to write down and you physically touch it and look at it. It’s not glowing at you. It’s just someone’s thoughts and feelings staring right at you in their future and in your present, interacting with you.
You’ve spent a lot of time in the Wisconsin punk scene. Was that the model for Vegetarian Alcoholic Press’s DIY values?
Definitely, that’s where I got the idea that your values hold weight, and the idea that if the rest of the world doesn’t recognize them, then there is someone who will, and that instead of waiting for the world to respond you can do it yourself and put it out there to share. If you think something is important and worth doing, there are more avenues than just sitting and waiting for somebody else to take notice.
It seems like that self-starter mentality still exists, but it’s moved online. Artists are launching their own blogs or websites or Kickstarting their projects, but they’re less concerned with creating a physical product.
It’s kind of frustrating to me because if you spend all day in front of a screen, you miss all the things that art and poetry and literature show you about the world or inspire you to create those things. It’s kind of a catch 22 to have so much great access but then to be stuck in front of a computer all day. So I really don’t know. I personally hope to meet and find more people who prefer the physical interaction with the world to the digital. But, I mean, we’re certainly moving toward a digital society.
For more information on Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, visit vegetarianalcoholicpress.com.
